There was no way the Everett Silvertips forward was going to touch the Stanley Cup when his uncle, Darryl Sutter, most recently won it in 2014 as coach of the Los Angeles Kings.

When the Cup arrived at the family farm in Viking, Alta., that summer, Riley, then 14 years old, posed for photos with the silver mug. Coming from a family steeped in hockey tradition, he didn’t come into contact with the trophy.

“I couldn’t,” Sutter said with a chuckle on Wednesday. “I got to within a few inches. There was a picture with my sisters and my uncle and my hand was on one of my sister’s shoulders and her shoulder was right by the Cup. I made sure to keep my hand a fair distance away.”

Several years later, Sutter is forging his own way in hockey, grateful for his family ties, but also confident he can bring attention for his skills, not his name.

A son of another Sutter brother, Ron, the junior hockey careers of Riley Sutter and others will take a step forward on Thursday night when they participate in the Canadian Hockey League top prospects game at the Sleeman Centre.

While their performances in the game won’t make or break the 2018 NHL draft hopes of the players involved, a good showing will be noted by the scouts throughout the building.

“I want to soak everything in,” Sutter said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, pretty special and I wanted to be invited here. At the same time, you want to show everyone what talent you have and I know there is still lots of time left in the year, but it’s a key game.”

Sutter, a 6-foot-3, 200-pound forward, has 20 goals and 17 assists in 45 games for Everett. He talks to his father, now working in player development for the Calgary Flames, nearly every day. A quick conversion with his uncle Rich on Wednesday brought encouragement, and there were good-luck texts from his other hockey-reared uncles.

Sutter isn’t the lone player of the 40 who were invited to play in the draft showcase who can be thankful for lineage laden with a sports background.

London Knights forward Liam Foudy, a late addition to the game because of an injury to the Vancouver Giants’ Milos Roman, can talk to either of his parents about the pressure that comes with intense competition. His mother, France Gareau, won a silver medal in track for Canada at the 1984 Summer Olympics and his father, Sean Foudy, was a football and track star at York University who went on to spend six seasons in the Canadian Football League after he was selected by Ottawa in the 1989 draft.

“I’ve always been calm under pressure,” the younger Foudy said. “It’s something that just came naturally to me because they were under high-pressure situations too. I don’t panic.” Ranked No. 91 among North American skaters by NHL central scouting on its mid-term list for the draft (Sutter is No. 72), Foudy is going to see more ice for the Knights in the final couple of months after the OHL club traded several key players prior to the deadline this month.

“My role has definitely increased and I want to move up in the draft stock and have a great second half,” Foudy said. “(Thursday night) I want to have fun and do what (I’ve) done all year — don’t play it safe, be aggressive and go for it.”

As for Sutter, he made a remark that could have come out of the mouth of his dad or any of his five uncles during their NHL careers. Just don’t expect him to fall back on the name sewn to the back of his sweater.

“I want to come to the rink every day and get a job done,” Sutter said. “I think I’ve done fairly well for myself so far, and I know I still have some work to do. I want to make a name for myself.”

SVECHNIKOV BACK AT IT

If a broken hand put a drag on Andrei Svechnikov in his draft year, it’s tough to find evidence.

The Barrie Colts winger enters the Canadian Hockey League top prospects game on Thursday night not only as the No. 1-ranked skater in North America in the NHL’s mid-term draft rankings, but also with nine goals and nine assists in 14 games since returning from the injury.

“I had surgery (in October), but it’s okay, and I don’t worry about it,” Svechnikov said on Wednesday.

The 6-foot-2, 188-pound Russian doesn’t have much of a shot at unseating Swedish defenceman Rasmus Dahlin as the projected first overall pick in the 2018 NHL draft. Nobody does.

But Svechnikov wouldn’t mind trying to put some space between himself and a couple of other high-end prospects in North America — Czech forward Filip Zadina of the Halifax Mooseheads, who will be on the opposite team on Thursday night, and forward Brady Tkachuk of Boston University.

“I think we three guys are the same — all working hard,” Svechnikov said. “We will see what happens (with the draft).”

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